REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN ANNOUNCEMENT ON AIRLINE SAFETY
The Roosevelt Room

3:00 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I asked
you here today so I could make some remarks about airline safety. But
in view of an item that was in the morning news, I would like to also
say a few words about the efforts we're making to ensure prescription
drug coverage for millions of our senior citizens and disabled Americans
who rely on Medicare.

Last year, I proposed a comprehensive plan to modernize
Medicare to meet the challenges of the 21st century, to extend the life
of the trust fund and add a much-needed voluntary option for
prescription drug coverage. And, as you know, there's been some
considerable resistance up until now from both the drug companies and
from some in Congress.

Today's news that the drug companies say they are ready to
work with us on providing affordable optional drug coverage and making
sure older people have access to the highest quality medications
developed is a very good first step. Now, what we need is positive
actions from the drug company and positive action in Congress -- not
just on the benefit, but on the efforts to strengthen and extend the
life of the Medicare trust fund.

I hope that this is a good beginning of what can be a very
good year for the American people.

Three years ago, I asked Vice President Gore to lead a
commission on aviation safety and security, looking at how to make our
skies as safe as they can possibly be. Already, there is less than one
fatal crash for every one million commercial flights. But we know we
can do better still. Any accident, any death in the air is still one
too many.

The commission set a goal of reducing fatal accidents by 80
percent over 10 years. Its members agreed that the best way to meet the
goal was to stop accidents before they happen and identify problems
before they have terrible consequences. This is a completely different
way of looking at safety. It requires business, labor and regulators to
work together in a completely different way -- as partners, not
adversaries. Everyone must focus on fixing problems, not fixing blame.

I'm proud to be here with all these people today to announce a
new partnership among business, labor and government to set us ahead of
the curve on safety. Under aviation safety action programs, pilots will
report problems or concerns immediately to safety experts at their
airline and the Federal Aviation Administration. They'll be encouraged
to share their valuable insights about doing a job more safely. They
will be freed from the fear of being disciplined for admitting that
something went wrong.

The FAA will still have the right to take action against
deliberate violations of aviation rules, criminal activity or drug and
alcohol use. The experts will get the data they need to stay in front
on safety, to solve problems, evaluate existing safety systems and
propose new ones.

We know these programs will work because American Airlines and
its pilots have run one as a demonstration for more than five years now.
Pilots reported literally thousands of concerns to the FAA. Those
reports produced real improvements, in procedures and in equipment.
They even helped designers and builders create safer planes and
airports.

For example, pilots' expertise changed the way some airports
use lights and signs on the runways, and pilots helped to rewrite the
safety checklist they must complete while planes taxi from the gate.
And when American extended its program to mechanics and dispatchers,
they improved equipment manuals and maintenance procedures.

I hope we'll be able to follow their example and open this
program to all the people who make airplanes fly -- flight attendants,
mechanics, dispatchers. For the first time, we have regulators,
business and labor working as real partners. When it comes to safety,
everyone has a responsibility. We want everyone on the team. And let
me again say, I have only the profoundest gratitude, on behalf of all
the American people, and especially those who will be in airplanes in
the future, to all those who are here with me today, and those whom they
represent.

Thank you very much.

Q Mr. President, why are you dropping caps on the budget,
which were so dear to you in the past?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, the caps were literally
completely shredded in the last budget by the majority in Congress. And
so what I have to do now is to adopt an honest budget based on the
spending levels that were adopted, in the reasonable expectation that
inflation at least will be taken care of, particularly in defense, if
you will remember, we had a big issue about how much the defense budget
would be increased, but there were other increases, as well.

So you will see when my budget comes out that it still does
everything I said we have to do. It invests more in education, science
and technology, and other important areas. It protects the money
necessary to take Social Security out beyond the life of the baby boom
generation, to extend the life of Medicare, and very importantly, will
still allow us to get out of debt, for the first time since 1835, over
the next 15 years.

So all the budget objectives that I have -- continue to run
the surpluses, getting the country out of debt, but continue to invest
in the things we need -- will be met by the budget I present to
Congress.

Q Mr. President, a pharmaceutical industry spokesman today did
say that your plan is still unacceptable to them, and if you come back
with the same plan they'll still fight you on this. My question to you
is, are you prepared to compromise with them? And what is your
understanding -- if their big objection is the danger of price caps not
only on Medicare drugs, but that this could spill over to the commercial
sector --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, there's no danger of price
caps. But what I think they're worried about is the fact that if the
government becomes a big buyer, that we'll be able to bargain for lower
prices at greater volume. I don't think that's a bad thing.

You know, someone ought to ask them how they can possibly
justify the fact that American senior citizens are now being carried
across the border to Canada to buy drugs produced in America by American
drug companies, with the help of public funds that have paid for
research, with the availability of tax deductions for research and all
of that, and Americans are going across the border in Canada and buying
the same drugs for less than half of what they cost here.

So I think what they ought to do is come sit down with us and
let's see if we can agree on a common approach. There may be a way that
we can agree on an approach. That's why I was somewhat cautious in my
remarks today.

I think it's a good thing that they recognize that it would be
better if Medicare could provide this benefit, because we know 75
percent of our senior citizens and probably a higher percentage of our
disabled people who need medications, cannot afford what they need. And
we know it can not only lengthen life and in many cases save lives, but
it can also improve the quality of life.

So I think it's a very important issue. And I take their
offer in a positive way and I just hope they'll come sit down with us
and we'll try to sit down with them and with people in both parties in
Congress who care about this, and see if we can't work out a common
position that we can pass, because I think it's a very important issue.

Q Do you think it's real, not a PR move on their part just to
keep you from bashing them?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know. You know, I don't like to bash
people. I never have done that as an option of first choice. And I'm
not bashing them today. But I think that their big problem is that
ordinary Americans now know that if they live close enough to the
Canadian border, they could cross the border and buy a lot of drugs for
half what they pay here, and in many other countries, even though the
drugs are produced here by our companies, and that any large producer
will do the best -- like in the private sector, try to get the best
bargain they can.

But if there's some way to work through this, I'll be glad to
sit down and make sure our people are available to them, and we'll try
to work it out.

Q Mr. President, is it right to offer financial incentives to
TV networks for incorporating antidrug messages into scripts? And are
you inclined to try to seek similar incentives for other issues
involving TV programming, like, say, gun violence?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all let me say, it is my
understanding that what General McCaffrey was trying to do is to amplify
the impact of the advertising program that we have been running -- and
keep in mind, a number of networks have agreed not only to take paid
ads, but have run a lot of our ads for free or reduced rates. And they
are under an obligation to run public service announcements.

I think that General McCaffrey reached a conclusion based on
how many people see public service announcements that are on late at
night as opposed to prime-time programming that more people watch, that
if the networks were willing to put a good antidrug message in
heavily-watched programs, particularly by the most vulnerable young
people, that would be a good thing. And it's my understanding that
there's nothing mandatory about this, that there was no attempt to
regulate content or tell people what they had to put into it -- of
course, I wouldn't support that. But I think he's done a very good job
at increasing the sort of public interest component of what young people
hear on the media, and I think it's working; we see drug use dropping.

And let me say, I've talked to a lot of people in the
entertainment community who liked the idea that without compromising the
integrity of their programs, they might be involved in all kinds of
public service efforts. So that's where I am on this. This was his
initiative and I hadn't given any thought to the question of whether it
might be applied in other ways, frankly.

Q Do you think it's a deceptive move? It could be used for
other messages in the future.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it could be. If the government were
writing the content, it could be. And I don't think we should be doing
that. I think that -- however, I think what General McCaffrey tried to
do -- which was to say, look, if you will do this, this can count
against your obligation to run public service announcements which, as
you know, are very often run in off hours and times when not many people
are watching -- I think this guy's intense and passionate and committed,
and we've got too many kids using drugs, still. So I think that's what
he was trying to do. I don't think there was any attempt to try to
undermine the content or the independence or the integrity of the
networks and the programming.

Q -- on aviation safety, the Europeans have been very
successful not doing what you're announcing today, but downloading data
from airplanes, analyzing hundreds of flights for patterns that could
cause problems. We don't do that much in this country, because there's
still a dispute between the airlines and the FAA over what would happen
if this turned up some violations that could result in prosecutions.
When are we going to get the kind of safety program they're using
successfully in Europe to analyze data instead of pilot reports?

THE PRESIDENT: Jane, you want to answer that?

ADMINISTRATOR GARVEY: Thanks, Mr. President. Nice to see
you, Matt. Well, first of all, as you know we're really looking at the
whole issue of FOQAL. We do have a policy in place which -- the policy
allows the information to be protected, which we think is very, very
good. We've got a number of airlines who are working with us on that
issue.

I think the real critical question is, when can we see that in
an actual rule? And we are working that through the administration, and
working very hard to see it in a rule-making. I think it's absolutely
the right direction. And certainly the combination of the information
we can get from the flight data recorders, as well as the information we
can get from the pilots or the mechanics, makes a very powerful tool.
So I'm glad we have the policy in place, and we're moving toward the
rule-making.

THE PRESIDENT: I'd like to make a general comment about this,
and then we've got to go. I'm obviously not an expert in how airlines
work, but I know quite a bit about production processes and
manufacturing. It's something I've spent a lot of time studying over
nearly 20 years now. It was a big part of the job I used to have when I
was a governor. And I can tell you that the kind of teamwork approach
that has been announced today, in making people feel they won't be
punished when they say they think there's something wrong or a mistake
was made, was, in my judgment, the most significant factor leading all
kinds of American manufacturers to a zero-defect approach, which had a
major role in the resurgence of the manufacturing sector over the last
decade, and a major role in the comeback of the American economy.

So I believe that what they're doing here is very important.
It is not rational to believe that what has worked so well in some other
sector of our economy won't work just as well here. I think it's a
great thing, and I thank them for doing it.

Q Should Michael Jordan come to Washington?

THE PRESIDENT: You bet. It will be fun. (Laughter.) That's
a no-brainer. (Laughter.) Thanks.